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Autodesk criticised by architects

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Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#181

Post by throwaway936482 »

krautsourced wrote: post #101
thdrdt wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for Revit but people are looking to switch to Blender from 3dsMax. The problem is not that Blender can't do what 3ds can but it lacks industry standard tooling compatibility. But still a lot of people in the industry are starting the switch to Blender. So change is coming.

People are always talking about switching to Blender (me included) - but they don't. Because as sad as it is, once you start to actually work with it in serious projects, you noticed all the things that hobbyists who hail Blender as the second coming never care about. I wanted to give Blender another got at replacing Cinema 4D for us (since their new licensing). I got used to the UI, though it's not nearlly as intuit…

Undo has certainly sped up in the latest version and the 2.9 build due for release at the end of this month but there's still a lot of room for improvement. I'm hopeful that the increasing number of large corporate backers are willing to pay for development and improvement of existing features (€30,000 gets you half a developer) which will focus the team on improving the quality of the basics rather just adding more shiny.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#182

Post by twelvechairs »

poseva wrote: post #50

As an structural engineer and former Autodesk user, I completely agree with the letter. I always saw Autodesk as a company where software goes to die a slowly painful death. It started with Autodesk Structural Detaling. They bought the software from a small company, renamed the product... and that was it. It had the same bugs release after release... we as customers tried our best to report the bugs, but nobody liste…

Its not just Autodesk, all big software shops tend towards low innovation. Look at Adobe, ESRI, even Microsoft office etc. Core products often haven't changed appreciably in 20 years - the business/money isn't in innovation, it is in having proprietary file formats that are industry standards and bundling big packages of software together that makes it hard to shift off the platform.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#183

Post by ramshanker »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #149
poseva wrote: post #50

As an structural engineer and former Autodesk user, I completely agree with the letter. I always saw Autodesk as a company where software goes to die a slowly painful death. It started with Autodesk Structural Detaling. They bought the software from a small company, renamed the product... and that was it. It had the same bugs release after release... we as customers tried our best to report the bugs, but nobody liste…

The gold standard around these parts is purported to be Tekla Structures. No affiliation, just a structural steel guru who’s happy to work with the fabrication drawings it spits out. I can spot Autodesk fabrication draws a mile away. Either the steel detailers don’t know how to configure it properly, it, as I suspect, it’s a steaming pile of dumpster fires. I used Autocad for 2D CAD quite a bit, and I don’t see the a…

Yes. Totally agree on TEKLA Structure. Their Concrete detailing also improved substantially in past few years.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#184

Post by blackoil »

asiachick wrote: post #53
numpad0 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They want to establish a steady income for a stable and feature complete tool. They want to fund a bunch of developers to maintain the features customers enjoy, or catch up with breaking Windows changes they should be paid to fix anyway, as reasons why subscriptions cost the price they charge.

> They want to fund a bunch of developers to maintain the features customers enjoy or catch up with breaking Windows changes they should be paid to fix anyway That's what $$$ upgrades are for. No need for a subscription if I'm happy without the new features and happy using it on an old OS. I'm happy to pay for new features I might actually use. I'm happy to pay for upgrades for a new OS. As an example though, I used…

$$$ versions have few cons:

1. It is a decision point so requires reselling at every new version.

2. Old Versions must now be maintained for n years.

3. Features and sometimes bugfixes) are now kept on hold to bundle to make a big bang version release.

4. Multiple devices now add additional decision point, should you buy and iPad pro version of the app and a mobile one. Value of these would vary for users.

With a subscription model: companies can reduce the maintenance window, have a 3 months release cycle, support multiple devices and have only one decision point for the user am I making enough to justify $ / month.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#185

Post by fsloth »

gorgoiler wrote: post #26

I don’t really understand SaaS for such mature products. My work (woodworking) is about making pieces of furniture. Using software is only a part of the process. It is not the actual goal. I want to pay a one off price for a stable and feature complete tool. I don’t want to fund a bunch of developers noodling around with new features I don’t want, or fixing bugs they should be patching anyway, as part of the original…

Large AEC clients actually prefer subscriptions. It's OPEX vs CAPEX. Purchasing a license comes with a huge CAPEX cost, while paying a monthly fee is OPEX so looks much less scary in the budget.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#186

Post by syshum »

twelvechairs wrote: post #182
poseva wrote: post #50

As an structural engineer and former Autodesk user, I completely agree with the letter. I always saw Autodesk as a company where software goes to die a slowly painful death. It started with Autodesk Structural Detaling. They bought the software from a small company, renamed the product... and that was it. It had the same bugs release after release... we as customers tried our best to report the bugs, but nobody liste…

Its not just Autodesk, all big software shops tend towards low innovation. Look at Adobe, ESRI, even Microsoft office etc. Core products often haven't changed appreciably in 20 years - the business/money isn't in innovation, it is in having proprietary file formats that are industry standards and bundling big packages of software together that makes it hard to shift off the platform.

I agree, but to defend them somewhat long established products like MS Office suffer from 2 competing interests, people that want innovation and people that want stability

For my core users any change at all to MS Office is met with frustration and huge amounts of backlash, even something as simple at changing the icon shading is a problem

Many people are robotic when it comes to using these products, going through the same steps day after day, file after file, and any change to the workflow is cause of extreme frustration,

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#187

Post by johnwalkr »

rjsw wrote: post #137
johnwalkr wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDA is at least simple text formats that work well with git, etc. I've seen lots of good version control of EDA using standard tools. I don't think I've ever seen good version control of mechanical CAD. The files are large, binary, not really diff'able, and almost every file is touched in every session. And the proprietary "Product Data/Lifecycle Management" tools are expensive, bloated and hard to use.

Mechanical CAD doesn't have to use binary files.

That's true, although most native formats of mechanical CAD programs are binary so I think a standard tool would need to support it. I've actually been searching online for solutions for a while as well as thinking about trying to solve this problem. Ideally, you'd want to be able to see text such as:

   - Feature3, hole: diameter 3.0mm
   + Feature3, hole: diameter 3.1mm
   - Feature4, extrude: Sketch 1: dimension4 400mm
   + Feature4, extrude: Sketch 1: dimension4 425mm
To get there, I'd propose a new CAD interchange format as the current ones are more like polygon meshes. I prefer this over some standard API as that would probably be broken in 10 years when you go back and check a part's history but you're not using the same CAD program anymore. Then, my hypothetical standard version control system would:

- control read/write access to files to prevent unintentional file changes due to rotated views, etc. The user would have to manually select which files are checked out/active. This might require a plugin to the CAD programs, so I may rethink this.

- Upon commit, the user adds comments, then all changed files are exported to the new interchange format

- text based diff is generated

- CAD with color highlights is generated

This is a pretty intensive operation, but it doesn't need to be instant. I think I would allow branches and make a workflow to automatically show conflicts based on diffs and CAD, then the user would manually resolve conflicts, declare a branch merged and select the files to go into main branch. After typing that, I am wondering if centralized control of read/write and one branch is the only way.

In the short term, I think an MVP could be scripted: - Before commit, user selects which files are to be kept and other files are rolled back to previous version and writes the commit message

- Updated files are exported to STL (there are many tools available to compare STL files visually)

- A tool generates combined/subtracted STL files for each updated file

- git commit

- git notes to cross-reference the combined/subtracted STL to the commit message

- Nice to have: built-in STL viewer

Github is supposed to have STL Diffs but it took me forever to find an example on github because everyone commits files as _v1, _v2 (highlighting my complaint that version control is not part of standard practice). Only to find out they removed this feature.

Grabcad has been great for me but I need to find an on-premises solution.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#188

Post by phkahler »

poseva wrote: post #50

As an structural engineer and former Autodesk user, I completely agree with the letter. I always saw Autodesk as a company where software goes to die a slowly painful death. It started with Autodesk Structural Detaling. They bought the software from a small company, renamed the product... and that was it. It had the same bugs release after release... we as customers tried our best to report the bugs, but nobody liste…

You may want to check the offerings from Altair. They have a lot to offer and even support many 3rd party tools. They do make a lot of acquisitions but that's to increase their capability, not to destroy competition.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#190

Post by jxf »

Hokusai wrote: post #133
imgabe wrote: post #5

There's easily a multi-billion dollar opportunity for anyone who can unseat Autodesk from the building design industry. Revit is the standard, and while it's improved a lot over the years it's still so ridiculously far from where it could be. I don't think people in software realize how incredibly far behind software tooling is in other industries. Take an idea like "version control for X" or "package manager for X"…

> There's easily a multi-billion dollar opportunity If I was able to build such a software that has potential on stealing Autodesk software. And Autodesk showed at my door with $50,000,000 in cash. I would sell it so fast that I would be flying in a hired private jet to some island free of the pandemic by next morning. The rational is simple. I will make up some numbers: If I have 1 chance in 1,000 to get 10 billion,…

> If I have 1 chance in 1,000 to get 10 billion, that is an expected value of 10 million (10b/1000). 50 millions is way better return than the expected value of 10 million.

That sort of logic is true if you're starting from scratch. But if you've already grown to a $50M company, your chances of being a $1B company are much better.

Put another way, if I pick a random person and ask you what the probability is that they'll finish a marathon, you'd probably say it's not very likely. But if I tell you they just passed mile 26, you might revise your estimate.

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